


Dual Existance

by ScuzBrains



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen, Trills, Two of them (two of them), fix-it fic kinda, multi-dimensional BS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:42:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26453563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScuzBrains/pseuds/ScuzBrains
Summary: My submission for my good friend KJ Gooding's zine- Nine Lives!A recon mission makes a surprising discovery, but is it too good to be true? (Spoiler- is Not! Everything is ok!)
Relationships: Jadzia Dax/Worf
Kudos: 5





	Dual Existance

Benjamin Sisko ran his hand down his face and fidgeted in his seat, the captain's chair of The Defiant. He and his crew had been run ragged by the ongoing war, and the suspense of their current mission was exhausting them all. They were cautiously patrolling the Gamma quadrant, hoping the risk of penetrating enemy lines might earn them some new allies, or at the very least, intel on the Dominion and their plans. They crawled along, cloaked in the Trialas system, somewhere they knew would be safe from outposts, as it was currently without any planets, lacking asteroids or other celestial bodies that might support anything of the kind. A voice snapped him out of his doldrums. 

"Benjamin, I'm picking up a gravimetric distortion, I don't-" Ezri was cut short as the ship lurched and shook, as if it were a trailer in an earthquake. 

"It can't be... Chief! Take a look at this. Look familiar?" O'Brien stood from his station to take a better look at the main display. 

"Why I'll be..." there on the screen, flickering into view, was a planet that had all but escaped their busied minds. Meridian. The planet that should only be present every 60 years, was there before them, not even 5 years since their visit. Any crewman who was present for the event stared at the screen, mouths open as they tried to figure out what had happened. Their collective awe was interrupted. 

Ezri was rapidly clicking buttons and turning dials. "Picking up a ship leaving the atmosphere of the planet! Small, maybe personal. I'm opening communication channels on several waves to see if I can-" She paused. "Got it, approaching vessel, come in. This is a Federation starship, we mean you no harm, please come in- what? But-" Garbled staticky speech was heard over the conn, fragments of an alien language the translator couldn't pick up. 

Sisko sat up in his chair, leaning forward. "Dax! What is it?" 

Wordlessly, she pulled an image onto the main display, the feed from the mysterious ship. Once again, the crew stood slack-jaw at what appeared. 

"It's... me."

###### 

Julian Bashir swallowed a hard lump of raw nerves that had centered themselves in his throat. He ground his teeth to keep his face stoic, he couldn't stop blinking, squeezing his eyes every time they fluttered shut, as if he could squeeze them so hard that when he opened them, he wouldn't see what was in front of him. It had to be a Changeling. Maybe a 'Prophet', he knows they can appear as people you know. Or knew. There was no possible way, that the person before him, sitting on a biobed, was who it appeared to be. 

"Well, what's it say Julian, am I an evil Changeling?" She adjusted her hair, pulling her ponytail slightly to the side.

Bashir took a deep breath. "According to all readings... you _are_ Jadzia Dax. But you can't-" 

She rolled her eyes and bounced onto her feet. "I know, I know, I stayed behind on the crazy alien planet with a guy I made way too many impulsive decisions about, and I'm not supposed to show back up for another 60 years, but that bodyless state really doesn't make Meridian as much of a sitting duck as you think!" She stretched her arms, as if she had recently awoken from a long sleep. 

"How..." Bashir could feel his voice straining, could feel tears fighting their way from his eyes.

"Deral is a nice guy but, come on, way too... hmm, stuck in place. So I figured if I could just shift myself back into this universe I could take a salvaged Meridian ship and-" She paused and looked at Bashir with a tilted head. She bit her lip. "What's wrong? I know it's sooner then expected, but I thought you'd be happy to see me. And hey, when did you start using so much gel?" She ran a hand through his slicked hair, and Bashir snapped.

"You died!" All the emotions poured from him at once. With tears streaming down his face, he wrapped his arms around her. She let out a small gasp as he held her tight. "Jadzia you were _killed_ months ago! We all thought you were gone and-" He gave up on holding back, openly sobbing with a mix of relief and confusion as he held her. 

The door to sickbay opened, and Sisko silently entered. "That really you, old man?" He said evenly, eyes cold and hard as he looked her over. Jadzia stared at him, how had everyone changed so much, how long had she been gone? 

Bashir sniffled and looked up. "Captain. It's her." 

The hardness melted from Sisko's face. He sprang towards the pair and added his own arms around the increasingly confused Trill. 

"Captain?" 

He laughed and smiled. "We'll fill you in on the way back home." He tapped the communicator on his chest. "Dax! Take us back to Deep Space 9." 

After a pair of quick beeps, Ezri responded. "Setting a course." 

Jadzia looked at the emotionally overwhelmed men who held her, she raised a brow, chewing her bottom lip. "We're on the way, fill me in. That Trill at the conn, that's Dax?" 

Sisko nodded. "Your ninth host, Ezri."

Bashir pulled his arms from the group hug and fussed with his uniform, dropping his gaze to the ground. "I- I really did try my best to save you. I did everything possible, but _Jadzia_ had died, and _Dax_ -" 

She nodded. "Dax needed a new host. Thank you, Julian." She took his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "Benjamin. _Captain?_ " 

He smiled, stroking his beard. A sound from the computer caught Bashir's attention. With a small sound he took a step away to see the results. Jadzia placed her hand on Sisko's head, empty palm gently rubbing his shaved scalp. They smiled as they stood, reunited, friends of over 2 lifetimes.

"I think I've figured out what happened. Sort of. Err, due to Meridian existing in two parallel dimensions, when we beamed Jadzia back, just as it shifted, well, we got one, and a separate, non-corporeal Dax was formed. And now..." The men turned to look at her.

"I've got a lot of catching up to do.  
\---

Jadzia Dax paced in the transporter room, trying to decide where to go first on the station. She considered Quark's, but thought it might be a bit overwhelming of a welcome. Ops? No, she was still technically on leave. Well, _technically_ she had been declared dead. As the ship had traveled, Bashir told her more about what had happened, it was strange to Dax to be told of a host's death, while remaining within them. It liked Jadzia very much, it liked that they were still joined.

###### 

It had been about an hour and she was still pacing, the scene had changed to the promenade, but she paced all the same. She wanted to sit, maybe even lay down and have a nap, but she was fairly certain her quarters had been emptied, if not totally refilled by a new inhabitant. She chewed her lip and began to make her way towards Security. 

When she walked through the door, Odo's head snapped up, attentive as always. Odo looked the same. At first anyways. His usual hard glare has softened the moment he realized who he was seeing. His eyes seemed tired, but he smiled, she always thought he looked charming when he smiled. 

"The Doctor told me to expect seeing you, but it's still... odd." Anyone unfamiliar with the man would hear disapproval in his voice, but any friend of Odo's could tell when he was happy. Jadzia gave him a smile and a nod, and he replied with his own slight nod. 

"I was wondering if you could tell me where a gal might find some empty quarters? I don't think I've got a room to my name right now." She laughed, playing off her situation cooly.

Odo made a noise in his throat as if to clear it. "Well, your name _is_ still on 641, but-" 

Her brows shot up. "Oh! Thanks, Odo! I'll see you around." She gave another smile, and she was off.

###### 

The door opened to her voice command with no trouble, but something felt off when she entered. She recognized some things of her own, but dispersed throughout the main room were antique weapons, tapestries, and candles. "Curzon's old friend's must have left me something... a lot of somethings." She said aloud to herself.

Suddenly, her stance changed. A rustling noise could be heard from one of the joining rooms. She stood poised to strike. With lightning speed a figure ran towards her, dagger in hand, and stopped about a foot away, pausing so quick it almost seemed like someone had called for the computer to freeze a holoprogram. Jadzia kept her fighting stance, but the figure before her dropped the dagger, a loud clattering sound echoing through the room. 

It was a Klingon man, tall with long hair. He wore a red Starfleet uniform adorned with a golden sash. He took slow, tentative steps towards her, and suddenly, she found herself wrapped in a bracing hug. " _Par'Mach'kai._ "

She didn't have a single thought of pulling away or shoving him off. She didn't know this man, but he clearly knew her. 

Wordlessly, they relocated to the sofa that sat in against the wall. The Klingon moved cautiously, as if the wrong move would make her disappear into thin air. After a deep breath, he spoke with closed eyes. "Captain Sisko had informed me of your... return. But I could not believe it until I saw you." He opened his eyes and turned his head. He started at her as if he were trying to memorize every detail. "I have also been informed that you do not know of our union." At this, he dropped his gaze.

Jadzia tilted her head to try and see his eyes again. She was very drawn to his eyes, hard as they were to see under his thick brows and the shadows his ridges cast on his face. "Something tells me you don't just mean the alliance between Klingons and the Federation." The Klingon blew a puff of air from his nostrils. 

"We were wed on stardate 51247.5, in Quark's establishment. It was perhaps the happiest day of my life. Having my son as my Tawi'Yan, and our trusted friends in attendance. Your dress was beautiful." He gestured to the small table besides the couch. On it stood a small holo-frame, showing her and this Klingon in traditional dress, surrounded by Sisko, Bashir, O'Brien, and 2 other Klingon wielding large batons. She picked up the frame.

"I recognize the ma'Stakas from the time Curzon took part in the kal'Hyah ceremony, of course I recognize them-" She gestured to the humans. "But these two..." She placed her hand over the smaller Klingon in the holo, contemplating. "Is this your son? He looks a bit big to be mine." She cracked a weary smile.

The Klingon nodded. "Yes, that is our-" he blinked, and took a deep breath. "That is my son, Alexander. His mother has been dead for... quite some time." 

Though Trill posses some empathic capabilities, they tend to work only between a host and symbiont, sometimes, rarely, even between two separate Trill. Jadzia knew this, but she didn't know why she was so sure she could feel all the pain in this Klingon from that one sentence. Whoever he was, he loved her very much. She brought a hand to her face, pinching the bridge of her nose and sniffling to keep tears from welling in her eyes. "I- " She let out a heavy sigh. "I don't even know your name. I feel so... I mean I _should_ know you, but it's not even that I forgot, I never /met/ you! But here I am, here _we_ are, _married_ , and I don't even know your name!" She let out a dry laugh and felt a tear fall. She hated to cry, especially in front of others. Or someone inside of her did, perhaps Dax, perhaps some lingering aspect of a past host, regardless, she didn't like it. 

A gentle hand wiped the tear from her face. "It is Worf. My name is Worf." He took another deep breath. "I will not force you to return to the life I knew with you. In a way, you are an entirely different Jadzia to my wife." He tenderly took the holo-frame from her, clicking a button on its base to darken the image, and sat it down in the table. "Trill have many lifetimes. I am glad to have known you, at least in one." 

She gave him a hug, tears flowing freely from her eyes. "I'm so sorry." She stood from the couch, and made her way to the door, rubbing her face dry with her sleeves. She expected to hear an ear shattering howl, as if Worf had seen another loved one die. But all she heard as she fled from the overwhelming emotions was quiet sniffling.

###### 

Jadzia stood in front of the door, unable to stop second guessing her plan. Jadzia had avoided Dax's new host. Death had never been something that really frightened her, but the idea of speaking with Dax's new host was terrifying in some strange way. She had seen and briefly spoken to her on the Defiant, and the girl seemed nice enough, but it just unsettled her, like she was looking at a ghost of herself. But here she was, and mostly because Benjamin had told her Dax's new host was a counselor, and she could very much use some counseling. She took a deep breath and rang the chime.

The door opened quickly, revealing the short, cheery Trill. "Oh! Jadzia! Uh, hi." She said with a polite smile. 

Jadzia returned this with a polite smile of her own. "That's me. I heard Dax is a counselor now." 

Ezri gave a shy nod. "Well, I'm a counselor, yeah."

"Are you a counselor that accepts walk-ins?" She hoped she wasn't come across as someone in a desperate need of help, but couldn't think of a more subtle approach.

"Oh, of course!" She gestured Jadzia in, leading her to a small, soft armchair.

Jadzia let out a nervous chuckle. "I thought Federation counselors were supposed to have couches in their offices." She but her lip and fussed with her hair. "Sorry, I've uh, I've never done anything like this. I know you know _Dax_ has, but- me, _Jadzia_ This is new to me. I don't really like asking for help." 

Ezri nodded, picking up a Padd to take notes. "Well, a good way to start is for _me_ to ask _you_ , what is it you think you need help with."

Jadzia tried not to roll her eyes. "What _don't_ I need help with? It'd be hard enough to get back into the swing of things if I'd just been missing for years, but then I find out, I wasn't missing, I went on and had a life off of Meridian, I had so much of a life that it killed me, and I don't know a single thing I even did!" She rubbed at her temples. "That big guy, Worf? We're _married_ and I've never seen him before in my life! I have a step-son, but I don't even have an up to dat uniform." She gestured to herself, then Ezri, pointing out that she was still in the outdated uniform she'd worn during her time on the physical Meridian. "All these events... how am I supposed to even catch up on them. I can look at records but it's not... what about the feelings I had when they happened?" 

Ezri nodded, fixing an empathetic gaze on Jadzia's face as she typed without looking. "Well, Dax can tell you the wedding was endlessly frustrating and stressful, but that moment you walked down the isle, you felt... happy, you felt beautiful and in love... until the boys started hitting your new husband with sticks." The two Trill laughed, and Jadzia sniffled, wiping at her eyes.

"Tell me more, please." She sat forward in her seat.

"Your zhian'tara was amazing, it was all so breathtaking, when Curzon wouldn't leave Odo you were pretty mad, but it all worked out in the end." 

"Curzon took over Odo?" Her eyes were wide.

Ezri nodded. "And they kissed Quark!" 

Jadzia laughed again. "I wish I could remember that. What else?" 

Ezri thought for a moment. "You re-associated with Kahn. With it's host Lenara, you almost ran away with her."

Jadzia placed a hand over her abdomen. "Dax cared deeply for the Kahn symbiont" 

Ezri reached her hand out. "Still does." Her hand hovered over Jadzia's, she looked up into her eyes, asking permission to touch the space where Dax sat within her. 

After a nod from Jadzia, she went forward, gently touching the space. The moment she made contact, it was like her hand was stuck. The two of them gasped, a strong energy surging through both of them. The Dax symbionts began to writhe under their skins, so strongly their hosts felt as if they'd tear free and burst from within them. The movement became more and more intense until it suddenly ceased. The symbionts were still, tears silently streaming from both their hosts eyes.

Jadzia bit her lip and grinned, trying not to bounce out of her seat from excitement. "Quick, tell me something else about Jadzia."

Ezri smiled, a giddy laugh escaping her. "I can't, I- I can't remember!" 

"I can!" Jadzia leapt and picked up Ezri in a powerful hug. "Oh I can remember everything!" 

Ezri shook her head, attempting to get Jadzia's long hair out of her face. "But how-" 

Jadzia couldn't stop laughing, but she released the smaller Trill from her grip. "I don't know and I don't care. Somehow, when we touched, Dax and... Dax, they connected and..." She hugged her again, lighter this time. "I'm back."


End file.
